A BRITISH expat has told how he was so desperate to leave Australia that he mailed himself back home to London in a wooden packing crate.

His bizarre decision to squeeze himself into a cramped wooden box, less than a metre-cubed, for the long haul flight almost cost him his life.

AP

A freight worse than death: Cargo handler Gary Hatch with crate Mr Robson was shipped in

Brian Robson was just a teenager back in 1965 and had fallen out of love with Australia. He had worked for 10 months as a bus conductor and railway porter on the Victorian railways in Melbourne, and had simply had enough.

In an interview with the BBC this week he recalled how he devised the crackpot scheme to fly back home on the cheap in a wooden shipping crate with three other British pals who helped nail him inside.

But, as he told at the time he was terrifyingly ill-prepared for the life-threatening rigours of a trans-global flight travelling as a piece of freight.

He said at the time that the crate was thrown around in the sub-zero temperatures of the aircraft hold and he was repeatedly knocked unconscious.

He said: “It was pretty scary. The crate was a bit too small. I had only a pint of water and five biscuits to live on.

“I had finished the biscuits and had two mouthfuls of water left when they found me. Most of the water had spilled out.”

Incredibly Mr Robson managed to travel 12,900 kilometres to Los Angeles, spending 92 hours nailed in the wooden box before he was discovered.

The discovery almost certainly saved his life as he was then flown the rest of the way to London as a passenger – officially deported from the USA.

Sergeant Kenneth Larse of the airport police in LA said he would have been dead before the crate had completed the next 12-hour, 8850km leg of the journey to London.

Cardiff-born Robson had intended to be shipped on a direct 36-hour Qantas flight from Sydney to London on 17 May.

His plane from Melbourne reached Sydney as planned, but the connecting flight was full and he was left upside down on the tarmac for 22 hours before he was instead put on a Pan Am flight to LA, where the freight was to be transferred.

In total, he spent four days in the crate.

Robson, now 70, said: “I was dead scared, petrified would be more like it.”

“Australia was a complete shock to my system.”

“I found it very difficult, and thought from the moment I got there I wanted to get out as quickly as possible.”